ANOTHER COLOUR?

Otago Witness, Issue 3251, 5 July 1916, Page 78

ANOTHER COLOUR?

By James Cassidt. (All Rights Reserved.) He arrived a little late for breakfast; but most of us did the same. His seat was next to ours, and his greeting was: " A frost last night.". " Yes. Do you dislike the cold?" " Oh, no —no !" There was an intensity in the negative that seemed scarcely warranted by the question. We looked at him a little more carefully. The face was round and fleshy, and the features small. We saw that he might have been a " smug " but for something that had upset his smugness. Anything that had possessed the power of transmuting or expunging smugness could not but be well worth attention. "Sorry there's no fish," said the waitress who had taken his order. " What else shall I bring you?" " Anything'll be all right," he answered cheerfully. "This tea is nearly cold," we observed. "How is yours?" V He laughed. " Splendid," he replied. " Perhaps you don't care, for it hot?" For a second he looked lost, bat he suddenly recovered his memory. " The tea! Hot or cold? It's quite —the— same." " What is the fellow? Is he a Mark Tapley?" we asked ourselves. " Things wear another colour since—l—went away," he observed slowly, and, as we felt by way of explaining his attitude: " Then you've " "Yes; I was on the Peninsula.* Had to go. I reckon to learn a few things." "What things?" " Well, I never kneAv how much I cared for home and all its fine things until then. I thought I shouldn't see it again, and—well, I saw things in—in another colour." He became silent, and fell to on his breakfast, a badly-burnt chop. We noticed for the first time that he was wearing round his right sleeve a scarlet arm-badge. Odd that we had not noticed it before. He was „piite a youngster —two or three-and-twenty at the most; but there was an expression on the face that might have been on Buddha's when he was reincarnated for the seventh time. " What's the new colour?" we asked presently. "God knows!" he said. "But nothing looks the same since—that time." " Had you not seen it before—then?" '"No: I'reckon T shouldn't be seeing it now but for the Peninsula." "Then we can never hope to see it?" "Who knows!" he answered. He continued his breakfast for a while; then he said : " I was badly hit, I reckoned when I saw it first. The firing was hot, and our chaps were dropping like stones. My turn came, and I fell, and lay all of a heap with a bullet through my "shoulder. Some chaps I know passed me at the trot. ' You lucky dog,' shouted one. ' You'll see to-morrow! Give them all my love at home.' Poor chap! He knew that they'd never come back; but I—l was put out of action at the beginning of the fray, for I couldn't lift my right arm. All' day Jong the fighting continued, and hundreds of the boys fell, never to rise again. I was faint from loss of blood and lack of food, and when I tried to rise I found that I was wounded in the left leg, and couldn't stand. The heat was fearful, and I thought that in the mad rush of things -it was ten to one if any would see me. "Presently I saw them—the eight bearers—with a stretcher, working near me. " What happened immediately after that moment I don't know. I came to as they were bearing me along the beach towards the hospital ship. Bullets and shrapnel were hailing everywhere. The eight tearers, who to.;k turns, paid no heed to them, but walked steadily on. When things were hotter than usual they stopped for a few minutes behind a sandhill, and then walked on again. Would they ever get through? Unshaved, unwashed for days, unfed and parched with, thirst, and in the faco of fearful odds, these chaps carried me to the temporary shelter preparatory to lifting me into the boat: but during those hours since the bullets found their billets I'd lost more than blood, and found —well, 1 can't rightly say what I'd found !" " They got you to the hospital shin all right?" ' " They did that; but three of the eight fell. Fine young chaps, and but for me —well, who knows?" " You mustn't feel like that about it.

They were doing their duty, as you were doing yours." " Oh, that's all right. They'd have been the first to say so; but—well, after that nothing tliat seemed to matter so before matters now. I see a different light, a different colour, and things are different. Three chaps died getting me here. I hate myself, and what can it signify whether the tea is ' hot' or ' cold,' if I eat ' fish ' or ' bacon'; but you'll think me whimsical. Put it down to shock if you like ; but there it is, you see—another colour—quite another colour. My God! it's blocdred!"